Karen Swallow Prior is a college professor who for 21 years taught English at Liberty University — a Christian school with ties to the Southern Baptist Convention. Though Liberty was not officially an entity of the SBC, Karen Swallow Prior has been on unpaid staff as a researcher for the liberal Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) formerly headed by Russell Moore.
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Russell Moore once stated that he wishes there were “a thousand more Karen Swallow Priors” and despite the fact that (thankfully) there are not, her influence is gaining momentum in the Southern Baptist Convention.
Swallow Prior, who now teaches at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary under Danny Akin, is known for her lack of clarity on social views and when asked about them, tends to give a different response depending on the audience — particularly in the area of homosexuality. In a contradictory move, Prior acknowledged that she both signed the Nashville Statement on sexual ethics as well as supports the Revoice Conference — a gay Christian conference designed to normalize homosexual attraction and increase acceptance among homosexuals in the Church.
Karen Swallow Prior — along with Matt Chandler of Village Church — both endorse a ministry that promotes aberrant behavior built on homosexual desires. The Center for Faith, Sexuality, and Gender is a progressive organization that promotes such things as man-to-man and woman-to-woman same-sex live-in partnerships. The organization, which is led by the same people — Preston Sprinkle, Nate Collins, and others — who run the Revoice Conference (which Swallow Prior says she still supports “the mission” of) has quite a few deviant positions that they hold to.
One article on the website titled A Celibate Same-Sex Couple? talks about two women who admit to being same-sex attracted who live together in a same-sex “celibate” intimate partnership with each other.
Asked why they’re “partners” and not just roommates, the two women stated,
Our doing life together just sort of happened. Neither of us expected it, as we were not seeking partnership. Things started to fall together organically. We had a natural desire to be there for one another, and we learned quickly that we make a good team. The reason we use the term “partnership” is that we see ourselves as a team: we work together to follow God where he calls us. Many people assume that partnership has an inherent connotation of “sexually active.” We have never understood the word “partner” in this way and like to challenge assumptions about what it means to be in a partnership.
Even in the midst of Swallow Prior’s exuberant giftedness in muddying the waters of biblical clarity, she’s made a name for herself in opposing conservative political candidates. Why? We don’t really know except that sexual immorality tends to bother her so much that she just can’t bring herself to vote for a man who once said sexual things about women. But two men living together in a marriage-like arrangement but still calling themselves “Christian”…well, that’s not immoral at all.
This is why it’s no surprise that she thinks voting for political candidates who don’t live up to her moral standards could, well, cause you to lose your own soul, whatever that means in her postmodern mind.
See, here’s the thing. If you know Karen Swallow Prior and understand the way she thinks—she is hopelessly given to postmodernism—then you understand that this is only about Trump. You can vote for a lost candidate who wants to expand abortion, push LGBTQ propaganda in schools, and strip the Church of all protected Constitutional rights, and there’s no concern about the loss of your soul for doing so. But if you go that route with a conservative candidate, then, well, you might just be about to lose your soul.